The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-11-16
THERE IS BUT ONE MOUNT SHASTA
Poetical Description of the Greatest
Mountain in America.
GatA IN Cinotnnatt ENquirer.

Poetlcal Description of the Greatest
Mountain in America.
Gath in Cincinnati Enquirer
Between the great pines going up you see
the religious dome of Mount Shasta its
| SHOWS and frowns so mixed that one per-
ceives it nearly with superstition.
Shasta is one of the finest mountains in
America, naked dome Of rock, gravel, and
perpetual snow, made by volcano, and
| having two side pieces or transepts, the
whole mass standing up white and dun in
crazy-quilt patches of triangles of snow and
ovals of rocks, and slides of loan and gravel,
| above skirt of Oregon pines, which are of
sober green and seem the kirtle of huge.
muscular, naked man, wearing a clout Of
green as he kneels upon the plateau and sur
| veys his brood of moundy peaks extending
around him in an amphitheatre of hun
dred miles.
There is but one Shasta and he is a Sierra
--one of the bold range beyond the Rockies,
overlooking the Orient West. "There is the
East, there is Europe" says the status of
Thomas Benton at st. Louis, pointing at
the same time West.
There is county of California called
Shasta, and range of mountains between
the Sacramento river and the sea is called
the Shasta Range. 1t is only nights ride.
cisco and Mount Shasta, and in this ride
you rise nearly 5000 feet to Sisson, in Straw
berry Valley, from which Mount Shasta's
peak is still 10, 1856 feet higher, or above the
sea II $40 feet,
1t is 10000 feet higher than the Lick OBJ
servatory on Mount Hamilton.
This is the power Of Mount Shasta-that
it rises so grandly above everything else
not like Pixies or Gray's Peak. one of a
fa1Vai1xr Of MOI ei4
the white table-cloth Of the skies 1t seems
the highest when you are at it, and looks to
be inaccessible. The railroad keeps winding
around its base as a wheelbarrow is guided
around a cathedral's steeples. 1t is more
than twice the height of Mount Washing
ton, and is seven eighths the height of Mount
Blanc.
For 1000 feet the snow-slides drop down
its sides, frequently turning red. Then for
1000 feet lower the inorganic mass stands
like Vulcan among his sinders. Next for
1000 feet encamp the frs, where once the
lava licked the world
Yet it is only twelve miles from Sisson
on the railroad to Shasta's top. and women
have assembled it, ami pant and grumble in
the deed less than men. In four DAYS
there was carried up by white men and
Indians copper monument weighing $500
pounds, which can be seen 100 miles away
But no signal officer can live on Shasta's
top. It's pimples, 1900 feet high, are like
the warts on Cromwell's head when
Wars like clouds that rise against the sun.
But make him greater Seem-not greater grow
As passed Shasta a great white cloud
was trailing from it like a pennon, called
the "SSnow-banner of Shasta" 1t really
was a palptating, cloud-like wild bird.
failing for breath as it flew, and holding
tip-toe to the peak, with its feet in snow
drifts, while its plumage blew outward and
away.
There is butte, or mountain hump near
Shasta, $500 feet high, but the SHOWS, like
virgin bellies at court, disdain to coquet with
it, and keep all their flakes for Shasta 1t,
too, is a fine and stuck-up thing, quite soil
tary. but the miners only call it Shasta Butte.
as the actors called Mr. Greene, when he
compared himself to Shakespeare, Shakes
peare's call-boy.
Coming up to Shasta from the south by
the tortuous canon Of the Sacramento, You
see the great mountain vaguely yet tremen-
dous, as 10 saw Jupiter in his cloudy passion,
but going from it northward, as the locomo-
tive turns often to see it, the god stands out
naked as before bold Juno in the domesticity
of the heavens: the pasturage plains of the
Klamath stretching below him like cover
let pushed away.
You see him to be volcano put ont by
SHOWS, and our only worthy brother of the
Alps. like Monte Rosa dissected out of
them and spirited away in the Gambols of
the Titans.
The Alps too often hide in the reeking
dews Of Lombardy, but Shasta is set in a
sky that is limpid as the blue in the eyes of
babes.
How still it is, with that great unmistak-
able scar of crater a mile and half wide,
telling where hell climbed up and vomited
it's blood and flame together drunllenly for
some IN Jmentary spasins of thousands of
years! We have resolved that hell is not,
but there is Shasta, aud somewhere must be
fire.
Glorious relic Of time when man was
not, and Pan was playing with the tools of
Vulcan, the molten waste of Shasta ran
away, spilling westward into range of
mountains, each scattering up to be like
Shasta's self, but making only tame minia-
lures Of it.